Black Africa Speaks:
MURDOCK, GEORGE P.
Black Africa Speaks An African Treasury. Edited by Langston Hughes. Crown. 207 pp. $3.50. Reviewed by George P. Murdoch Mellon Professor of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh The DELUGE...
...The authors, consequently, come mainly from African countries formerly under British rule...
...The handful of folktales and proverbs presented in translation provide only pallid examples, but the influence of tradition on the form and content of modern stories is often very clear, and a Ghanaian, writing on "Akan Poetry," utters a profound ethnological truth when he states: "We do not spend time on the daffodils or the nightingale or on reflections on abstract beauty as things in themselves, but only in relation to social experience...
...One is the heritage of an indigenous literary tradition of unquestioned merit...
...It is by no means, however, a unitary impression but one compounded of at least three disparate elements...
...In backgrounds, however, they range from a Nigerian metalworker and a South African dockworker to such well-known political figures as Tom Mboya and Kwame Nkrumah...
...The catholicity of the editor's canons of choice deserves praise...
...Reviewed by George P. Murdoch Mellon Professor of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh The DELUGE OF recent writing on Africa comes almost wholly from Caucasians with European cultural backgrounds...
...There are examples of odd but delightful uses of English, as when Tutuola speaks of a woman as being "under pregnancy...
...Many are here published for the first time...
...Out of the collection there emerges an intangible impression of both novelty and authenticity...
...In the words of one of them: "This is what is so terrifying about being black in South Africa, this maniacal desire to revenge...
...The proposal came to nought when Kenyatta, subsequently the alleged head of the Mau Mau movement and now imprisoned in Kenya, ridiculed the idea as childish...
...The editor has substantially achieved his objective...
...Roughly a third of the content consists of articles, another third of original stories, and the remainder of essays, poems and miscellaneous literary productions...
...The volume even contains an occasional item of historical interest...
...A second component, repeatedly manifested in writers from the recently emerging nation-states, is an exuberant note of pride, hope and youthful confidence...
...There is an article on "Renascent Africa" which outscores any European diplomat in its multiplicity of political cliches...
...There are such striking poetic expressions of négritude,—blond Nordicism in blackface—as the following by Francis Ernest Kobina Parkes of Ghana: Give me black souls, Let them be black Or chocolate brown Or make them the Color of dust— Dustlike, Browner than sand...
...Except for an occasional translation, all were composed in English...
...Few persons interested in Africa, laymen or specialists, will fail to find in this unpretentious book elements of novelty and charm as well as grounds for a broadening of perspectives...
...Langston Hughes, with the insight befitting a poet, has conceived the novel idea of letting Africans speak for themselves, and has assembled a volume of diverse contributions written exclusively by people of African birth and blood...
...But if you can Please keep them black...
...Third, in contrast, the authors from South Africa, nearly half of them now in exile, voice unmistakably the bitterness and despair generated by the progressive humiliation of their race in that tragic country...
...According to Peter Abrahams, at a time when he, Nkrumah and Jomo Kenyatta were members of an African colony in London, "Nkrumah proposed that we form a secret society called The Circle, and that each of us spill a few drops of our blood into a bowl and so take a blood oath of secrecy and dedication to the emancipation of Africa...
...There are extracts from the "lonely hearts" columns of the local press...
Vol. 44 • January 1961 • No. 5
